Saturday, November 07, 2015

The Memoriad website has had a swanky new update and a new announcement attributed to Scott Flansburg (it kind of reads like it was written by someone whose first language is Turkish, but it says it's from Scott, so who am I to argue?) about the dates and location of the 2016 Memoriad (yay!) - November 7-11 2016, at The Western in downtown Las Vegas!

Remember how awesome the Memoriad was in 2012? I'm sure this one will be even bigger and better! I really can't wait, even though it's still a year away and I don't believe in acknowledging that anything could happen so far in the distant future (certainly not memory competitions - I've got accustomed to the dates and locations being finalised a couple of hours before they start...)

There's the disturbing consideration that this will be the first mind-sports event I go to after my fortieth birthday, of course, but I choose to see this as a good thing. As Phill pointed out on Facebook a while ago, I've won big memory competitions while in my twenties and thirties, perhaps I can be the first person ever to do it in my 20s, 30s and 40s? That'd be an achievement!

Friday, November 06, 2015

There's been some talk among all the top memory people about rating the Extreme Memory Tournament competitors, using something along the lines of the Elo system in chess. Or for that matter in othello, which uses basically the same principles.

Until I looked it up last week, incidentally, I always thought it was the ELO system and the letters stood for something (although probably not Electric Light Orchestra), but it turns out it was named after a man called Elo. Anyway, the basic idea is that your rating goes up by a bit if you win a game and down by a bit if you lose. How big the bit is depends on the difference between your rating and your opponent's.

Now, the othello ratings are calculated by David Haigh, who's the only person in the universe who knows how it works. Well, him and all the people who've read his detailed explanation of how they're calculated and understood it, but I don't fit into that category. I've got a vague idea, but that's about as far as it goes. Not daunted by this, I've crunched some numbers and drawn up a rating list to see what it would look like.

People start out with 1400 points, for no good reason except that that's what the othello ratings start with, and increase/decrease by an amount that is 16 points if the memorisers have identical ratings, tending towards 0 or 32 depending on how big the gap between their ratings is. The change goes on a normal distribution (I don't entirely know what that is, I'm not a mathematician, but I put numbers into Excel's normal distribution formula until it comes out with the same kind of numbers as David quoted in his article). The othello ratings work differently for people who've played few or no matches before, but since everyone is starting from scratch here, and since I don't understand the calculation of provisional othello ratings (no, seriously, I'm not a mathematician, I'm an accountant and financial analyst, it's an entirely different discipline) I haven't done that.

Anyway, this arbitrary ranking makes a list that looks like this:

ALL

Name

Matches

Rating

1

Simon Reinhard

61

1616

2

Johannes Mallow

73

1601

3

Boris Konrad

55

1537

4

Jonas von Essen

54

1509

5

Christian Schäfer

44

1503

6

Alex Mullen

36

1497

7

Katie Kermode

25

1476

8

Enhkjin Tumur

25

1470

9

Johannes Zhou

21

1409

10

Marlo Knight

15

1407

11

James Paterson

12

1399

12

Gunther Karsten

12

1395

13

Andi Bell

12

1385

14

Mark Anthony Castaneda

45

1381

15

Akjol Syeryekkhaan

19

1375

16

Marwin Wallonius

32

1374

17

Ben Pridmore

38

1371

18

Erwin Balines

12

1369

19

Yanjaa Altansuh

20

1366

20

Lance Tschirhart

15

1357

21

Ola Kåre Risa

37

1354

22

Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan

15

1337

23

Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar

15

1320

24

Annalena Fischer

31

1314

25

Anne Reulke

15

1313

26

Norbert Reulke

15

1306

27

Bat-Erdene Tsogoo

12

1293

28

Johann Randall Abrina

27

1287

29

Tuuruul Myagmarsuren

15

1279

Obviously with there being so few matches for some people (like James, who won six out of twelve in 2014 but didn't qualify for the knockout stages), it's not super-scientific, but I think it still makes interesting reading. I would've hoped to be higher than 17th, since I basically made up the rules myself here, but that's how it worked out.

Incidentally, if you didn't know, you can see all the matches in the wonderfully-interactive XMT Live sites. Here's 2014 and here's 2015. If you want to see all Simon's matches, for example, type 'Simon' into the bar at the top. If you want to see all of Anne's images matches, type 'Anne images'. And so forth. It's great!

But the thing about the XMT is that there are five different kinds of match - six, if you count the surprise task. Some people are good at some disciplines but bad at others. Really, if you want to analyse who's good at the XMT, you might want a ranking system for each discipline. So even though there are so few matches as to make the whole thing pretty meaningless, that's basically what I've done here...

Cards!

CARDS

Name

Matches

Rating

1

Simon Reinhard

10

1505

2

Ben Pridmore

8

1488

3

Mark Anthony Castaneda

10

1478

4

Johannes Mallow

15

1473

5

Alex Mullen

8

1465

6

Christian Schäfer

7

1418

7

Lance Tschirhart

3

1417

8

Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan

3

1416

9

Gunther Karsten

3

1416

10

Jonas von Essen

11

1409

11

Yanjaa Altansuh

4

1402

12

Enhkjin Tumur

4

1401

13

Ola Kåre Risa

9

1388

14

Marlo Knight

3

1388

15

Anne Reulke

3

1387

16

Andi Bell

3

1387

17

Akjol Syeryekkhaan

3

1385

18

Bat-Erdene Tsogoo

3

1384

19

Erwin Balines

3

1384

20

Norbert Reulke

3

1382

21

Boris Konrad

10

1380

22

Johannes Zhou

4

1371

23

Marwin Wallonius

6

1368

24

Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar

3

1356

25

Tuuruul Myagmarsuren

3

1356

26

James Paterson

3

1355

27

Annalena Fischer

7

1352

28

Katie Kermode

4

1345

29

Johann Randall Abrina

6

1344

That's more like it! Second place in the card ranking! I have tended to win all my matches there, which is why it's always my first choice in the knockout events. Possibly even against Simon, though I'll have to think about my strategy there. The interesting thing is that Mark Anthony comes in third - I never really thought of him as being a cards specialist, but looking back at his results, he's very consistently good at it. And also improved quite a lot between 2014 and 2015, too. Be worried next year!

Images!

IMAGES

Name

Matches

Rating

1

Johannes Mallow

8

1517

2

Christian Schäfer

5

1443

3

Boris Konrad

6

1435

4

Katie Kermode

6

1431

5

Simon Reinhard

5

1415

6

Enhkjin Tumur

5

1415

7

Mark Anthony Castaneda

3

1415

8

Alex Mullen

6

1407

9

Akjol Syeryekkhaan

4

1403

10

Marwin Wallonius

4

1401

11

Ben Pridmore

4

1400

12

Johannes Zhou

4

1399

13

Annalena Fischer

4

1397

14

Jonas von Essen

4

1397

15

Marlo Knight

3

1387

16

Norbert Reulke

3

1385

17

Yanjaa Altansuh

3

1385

18

Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan

3

1384

19

Lance Tschirhart

3

1384

20

Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar

3

1384

21

Ola Kåre Risa

3

1355

22

Anne Reulke

3

1353

23

Johann Randall Abrina

3

1353

24

Tuuruul Myagmarsuren

3

1353

Did you know Hannes won eight out of eight images matches in 2015? See, the cool thing about these ratings is that they show that kind of trivia. Enkhjin was unquestionably the fastest when it came to images this year, but the XMT is about beating your opponent and making sure you get it right every time.

Hmm, here's a weak spot for the unstoppable Simon, it seems... although kind of a weak spot for me too, so taking advantage of it might be a problem. Numbers is the easiest discipline to make a mistake in and fail to get the perfect 80, so it probably favours people who are just the right amount of careful...

Words!

WORDS

Name

Matches

Rating

1

Simon Reinhard

11

1545

2

Johannes Mallow

14

1534

3

Jonas von Essen

11

1520

4

Boris Konrad

9

1477

5

Christian Schäfer

10

1452

6

Katie Kermode

5

1420

7

Johannes Zhou

3

1416

8

James Paterson

3

1416

9

Gunther Karsten

3

1400

10

Alex Mullen

7

1394

11

Mark Anthony Castaneda

8

1391

12

Lance Tschirhart

3

1390

13

Ola Kåre Risa

7

1387

14

Marlo Knight

3

1387

15

Annalena Fischer

7

1385

16

Erwin Balines

3

1384

17

Norbert Reulke

3

1382

18

Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar

3

1381

19

Enhkjin Tumur

4

1377

20

Yanjaa Altansuh

4

1374

21

Akjol Syeryekkhaan

4

1370

22

Marwin Wallonius

7

1366

23

Ben Pridmore

7

1360

24

Anne Reulke

3

1358

25

Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan

3

1356

26

Andi Bell

3

1355

27

Bat-Erdene Tsogoo

3

1355

28

Tuuruul Myagmarsuren

3

1353

29

Johann Randall Abrina

6

1315

Now, if I could find a way to get 47 every time in words, I could fight my way back up the rankings, maybe...

And finally, those Extreme Memory Tasks...

SURPRISE

Name

Matches

Rating

1

Simon Reinhard

8

1480

2

Boris Konrad

6

1458

3

Alex Mullen

4

1430

4

Katie Kermode

2

1430

5

Marwin Wallonius

1

1417

6

Jonas von Essen

5

1414

7

Enhkjin Tumur

2

1403

8

Ben Pridmore

2

1399

9

Akjol Syeryekkhaan

1

1384

10

Annalena Fischer

1

1384

11

Christian Schäfer

3

1383

12

Yanjaa Altansuh

1

1383

13

Johannes Zhou

1

1382

14

Mark Anthony Castaneda

4

1371

15

Ola Kåre Risa

2

1369

16

Johannes Mallow

9

1312

Not really enough data here to go on, especially since the surprise tasks are different every time...

And so that's that. Comments, queries and suggestions are very welcome!